Dredges have encountered wood shavings, sticks, rocks and other debris in the western channel of Rogers Island in Fort Edward.
(Photo provided)

This is the second in a two-part series examining the disposal of the PCBs being dredged from the Hudson River. Go to www.saratogian.com to read Sunday's article on how the Andrews site was chosen and the controversy surrounding the site.

ANDREWS, Texas -- Over the next several years, an estimated 2.65 million cubic yards of PCB-laden sediment will be dredged from the Hudson River and taken by railcar to rural Andrews County, Texas.

The PCBs, short for polychlorinated biphenyls -- an oily substance found to be a likely carcinogen -- were legally released into the river by General Electric Co.'s Fort Edward and Hudson Falls plants between 1944 and 1977. In 2002, the EPA ordered GE to dredge the tainted sediment from the river and dispose of it. The project is the largest of its kind ever undertaken and is scheduled to continue through 2016.

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After being processed in Ford Edward, the sediment will be taken to Texas and buried in "red bed" clay at the Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews County, which is just over the New Mexico border. Though the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas environmental regulating authority say the desolate desert county is the ideal new home for this toxic waste, many wonder why New York is shipping its toxic waste off to Texas and whether it is the safest and best plan.

About 14,000 live in Andrews County, which, at 1,500 square miles, is twice as large as Saratoga County.

Hazardous waste disposal in Andrews -- the only incorporated city in the county -- has a history more than a decade long. In the late 1990s, the county commissioned a study performed by professors at Texas Tech University to determine whether the WCS location was appropriate for disposal. City Manager Glen Hackler said the study was part of "due diligence" done by the county and looked into the Ogallala's proximity to the site. "For this to be something we could embrace, there needed to be good geology, the right science and proper regulatory oversight," Hackler said.

The study determined the site was ideal for hazardous waste disposal, Hackler said. It does not overlap the Ogallala Aquifer and contains "a God-made impermeable liner" of red-bed clay, he said. Hackler said he and the citizens of Andrews are "very much concerned with what I consider God's creation."

"This is not a case of economics at all costs; this is actually an industry that is suitable for our city and county," Hackler said.

Kenneth Rainwater, director of the water resources center at Texas Tech, was one of the professors who conducted the Andrews study in the 1990s. Holes were drilled around the site to search for groundwater. He said they found "no significant ground water."

Rainwater called the WCS site "a smart use of this type of property."

"Here is a proper use, as we used to joke in the '90s, of the lack of water in the area," he added.

Once they arrive at WCS, the train cars are unloaded and the sediment is buried in a shallow, lined pit dug into the clay soil. More plastic sheeting covers the full pits.

"People should keep in mind there's a double membrane liner system. This is not an open hole where people just back a truck up to it and dump garbage into it," Rainwater said.

There are conflicting reports about how close the dump site is to the huge aquifer, which stretches from South Dakota to Texas. A team of scientists who spent four years reviewing WCS's application for permits for radioactive waste concluded the site was inappropriate because it was too close to the Ogallala and another aquifer, and leakage into those water sources too likely. They claim the site was as close as 14 feet to two water tables.

Andrews, Texas, officials and scientists commissioned by them dispute that, but the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club definitely sees a problem.

"We're very concerned that this is an inappropriate site for PCBs," said Neil Carman, Clean Air program director. "The whole thing is very, I think, irresponsible on the part of General Electric."

George Pavlou, acting director of EPA Region 2, responded to Carman's concerns in an April 21 letter. "EPA carefully considered a number of options for treatment and disposal of the sediment before determining that off-site disposal in a licensed landfill was the most appropriate way to dispose of the sediment," he wrote.

GE is "threatening a very sensitive aquifer in West Texas," Carman contends. "I don't advise that this material be taken to anybody's backyard. We need to stop doing this," he said.

Adam Greenwood, a lawyer and the founder of the recently formed group Save the Ogallala Aquifer, contends dumping the PCBs in Andrews is only a temporary solution that may create more problems for taxpayers in the long-run. "I doubt they'll be able to find another sucker, another Andrews, Texas, to take the problem off their hands," he said.

Hackler disagrees: "Andrews is not a community that likes to be sold on something. We're as concerned as anyone about the environment and long-term issues, but it's a community that is very savvy when it comes to this issue in particular. People have done a lot of their own due diligence," he said.

"The people in Andrews are normally very conservative," Greenwood said. "So, their instinct is to think 'well, if environmentalists are against it, then we must be for it.' But over time, as they're getting exposed to the details ... they're starting to think 'we don't want our drinking water contaminated.' "

David Carpenter, a professor at University at Albany who has extensively researched the health effects of PCBs, tends to agree with Greenwood.

In a few decades "the PCBs will be at absolutely the same concentration that they were the day they went in," he said. "The PCBs are going to be there forever. While plastic (which lines the dump) lasts a long time, it almost certainly doesn't last forever," Carpenter added.

He expressed concern that in the course of several generations people could forget the PCBs are there and develop the area.

Still, Carpenter said, there is no cost-effective alternative to storage. "There's a lot of research into alternatives to landfilling and incineration, but nothing has developed to the point where it's cost-effective," he said.